By Dan Feldman

Detroit Free Press Special Writer

Dan Feldman writes for the Detroit Pistons blog PistonPowered. His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the Detroit Free Press nor its writers. PistonPowered writers will contribute a column every Friday at freep.com/pistons. Contact Dan anytime at pistonpowered@gmail.com or on Twitter @pistonpowered.

The NBA draft combine begins Wednesday, the biggest step in the evaluation process since the college season ended. Teams will interview players and measure their heights, wingspans, jumping ability, speed and more.

Draft boards will change and begin to come into focus. But every year, teams put more stock into the combine than they should. Nothing is more important than college (or D-League or overseas professional) games, which reveal how someone — gasp! — plays basketball.

The combine and the rest of the predraft process has value, giving teams sharper views about athleticism and personality, but games still reign supreme.

So in an effort not to lose sight of the most important aspect of the draft process and not overstate combine results, here is my draft board for the Pistons at this moment. This board might change as details of the predraft process are revealed, but this is the baseline.

I use a tier system for ranking players. Essentially, I rank players based on value (a combination of current ability, potential and odds of reaching that potential), but players with nearly identical value get grouped together into a tier.

When drafting, I’d pick from the highest tier with players available. If multiple players remain in a tier, I’d pick the player who best fits the drafting team’s needs.

In theory, there could be anywhere between one and 60 tiers for each draft. The dividing lines are based on merit, not an artificial number.

This system slightly differs from taking the best player available regardless of position, because sometimes multiple players seem to have the same value. At that point, rather than parsing a minuscule difference between the players, teams should choose the one that best fits their needs.

The system also prevents teams from reaching for need and passing on higher-quality prospects, a common way teams err in the draft.

So here’s how I’d organize the board if I were the Pistons:

Tier 1

1. Nerlens Noel

Medical examinations of Noel, who tore his ACL in February, will be essential. Has he lost some of his athleticism? Will he be more likely to get injured? Will future injuries affect him more adversely than they would others? If the answers to those three questions is “no,” Noel is No. 1. He has proved himself the top prospect in the draft, and I wouldn’t mind waiting until midseason for his return. If there are injury concerns, he could slide, but it’s difficult to envision him falling past past the players currently in Tier 2.

Tier 2

2. Otto Porter

3. Trey Burke

4. Victor Oladipo

5. Ben McLemore

These players were very productive in college and have the youth/athleticism/raw talent to continue improving — a great combination in the draft.

As for the order, the Pistons could really use a do-it-all small forward like Porter, who’s the youngest of the group. (That boosts his value to the Pistons because that increases his upside, and they can afford to wait for him to reach it.)

Point guards generally impact the game more than shooting guards, so when teams need both — as the Pistons do — point guards like Burke get the edge over shooting guards like Oladipo and McLemore.

Oladipo’s defense gives him the edge over McLemore. The Pistons might need a score-first, score-only player such as McLemore right now, but in the long run, it’s difficult to win big with a player who can’t contribute more.

Tier 3

6. Anthony Bennett

Most have Bennett mixed with my Tier 2 players, but I had him a step below even before news of his rotator cuff surgery. His defensive indifference just gives me too much pause. For the Pistons, this distinction matters little because Bennett’s fit would rank him fifth among the second-tier players anyway.

Tier 4

7. Shabazz Muhammad

8. C.J. McCollum

9. Alex Len

Muhammad fits the Pistons’ current needs very well, but as is the concern with McLemore, a score-first, score-only player can help only so much in the long term. Can Muhammad do more? Ben Howland’s system at UCLA notoriously makes it difficult to assess guards.

A scoring point guard such as McCollum won’t exactly fit with Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond, who need entry passes and lobs, but McCollum might be too talented to pass up.

Len is polished and athletic, but he’d be stuck behind Monroe and Drummond. Also, is he tough enough?

This fourth tier is equally likely to add players as have a player emerge above the rest before the draft. The are many players (including Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Cody Zeller) who are a small step below but could move up.

There are only five players I’d be truly excited for the Pistons to draft: Noel, Porter, Burke, Oladipo and McLemore — Tier 1 and Tier 2.

Unfortunately, the Pistons are unlikely to get any of those five unless they move up in the May 21 lottery. The Pistons have the No. 7 pick, meaning they’re most likely to pick seventh or eighth, and there’s a 12.5% chance they pick in the top three.

So, for now, I’ll hope for luck, either in the lottery or a top-two-tier player falling to the Pistons in the middle of the lottery. But most likely, the Pistons will have to sort out a flawed and closely grouped pool of players in Tier 4 and beyond.